The present disclosure relates to tubing and, more particularly, to high pressure tubing for a gas turbine engine.
Gas turbine engines, such as those that power modern commercial and military aircraft, generally include a compressor section to pressurize an airflow, a combustor section to burn a hydrocarbon fuel in the presence of the pressurized air, and a turbine section to extract energy from the resultant combustion gases.
External fittings for gas turbine engines are often constrained by the available envelope be they a nacelle, fuselage or other structure. Ducting of low-pressure fluids can be accomplished with non-round conduits, but high-pressure fluids demand round tubing to minimize weight through utilization of the principle of tension hoop stress. The constrained envelope often requires that designers resort to multiple small diameter tubes to carry the desired flow rates. This results in additional connections, each of which may be a potential source of leakage and requires time for assembly, inspection, and testing. Vacuum chambers are also designed with circular cross sections to uniformly load the chambers walls in compression.